Samsung had launched the latest flagship phones, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge in India few weeks back. These devices were first announced at the MWC 2016 last month in Barcelona. The new Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge will come with a 5.5 inch Quad HD Display which has a Super AMOLED panel with 2560×1440 resolution.
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is powered by Exynos Octa-Core processor in India and will not come with the more powerful Snapdragon 820. It is coupled with 4GB of RAM and 32GB internal storage. Here is the detailed review of the phone.
Related Reading: Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Unboxing
Here is the video review.
Design and Build:
In the design department, Samsung has gone with almost the same design language of S6 Edge with the curved edge display on either side and the body comprised of a gorgeous combination of glass and metal. It has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection on both the front and rear panels. Even though the S7 Edge is a 5.5-inch device, it doesn’t feel like a huge one thanks to the impressive screen-to-body ratio.
The volume buttons are placed on the left side while the power button on the right side. The top houses the SIM tray and secondary microphone. The 3.5 mm audio jack and micro USB charging slot along with speaker unit is located on the bottom panel. The rear panel has the 12MP camera, LED flash, heart rate sensor and Samsung logo. The front panel houses the 5.5 inch Quad HD display, sensors and front camera. At the bottom, we have a physical home button which also acts as a fingerprint scanner and the two capacitive backlit buttons.
One of the features which makes a come back to S7 Edge is IP68 certification. The device is totally dust-proof and can be submerged in up to 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes.
As a flagship phone, the S7 Edge looks gorgeous in terms of design and build quality. But at the same time, it is a fingerprint magnet and you might end up cleaning it quite often.
Display:
Samsung has struck to the Quad HD display on the S7 Edge while there is an increase in the display size from 5.1 inches on S6 Edge. The 5.5-inch display has a resolution of 1440×2560 along with 534PPI which makes the display a treat to use. The text is sharp and images are crisp on the display. Samsung has used the usual Super AMOLED panel which provides an excellent all round experience with good contrast, brightness and viewing angles. The colors look vibrant and punchy although might be a bit saturated for few users.
As the name indicates, it comes with dual Edges for which Samsung offers some additional features (we will discuss this in the software section). There is also another feature called ‘always on display’ which shows clock or calendar and basic notifications on the display when it is turned off. The touch response on the display is also very smooth. Overall, the S7 Edge has a mighty impressive display.
Software:
The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge runs on Android Marshmallow 6.0 with the custom TouchWiz UI from the company. Over the years, Samsung has fine-tuned the TouchWiz UI and removed most of the bloatware and this is probably the best iteration of TouchWiz. The TouchWiz does not have any resemblance to stock Android and it has its own customized notification center with quick toggles. There is an app drawer and it is also customizable and sortable.
The settings menu also has a completely different look with quick access to some of the settings.
Long press on the home screen and you get the option to do some customizations to the phone in the form of themes and wallpapers. Samsung’s theme store has a good collection of themes to choose from, both paid and free ones. You can also customize the screen grid based on the number of apps you want to show up.
Samsung has included few apps, from their own list of apps like health, S Voice, Email, My Files, Voice Recorder, Samsung Gear and there is also Microsoft Office suite included in the phone.
The Edge screen is one of the important features and Samsung has included three options- Edge panels, Edge feeds, and Edge lighting. Edge panels can be customized from the list of ones available like contacts, feeds, app list and more. You can also download additional edge panels from the store. Edge feeds show information when the display is turned off. Then there is Edge lighting which will show who is calling by the color of the Edge screen and this works only for people in your contacts.
While the Edge display features look good, they are still not something very much useful.
The phone also supports a new feature called always on display wherein you can have a clock, calendar or image even when the phone display is turned off. The phone also supports split screen where you can run two apps at the same time on the 5.5-inch display. There are also a handful of gestures available on the device including flip the phone for mute, swipe your palm for the screenshot, double-tap the Home key for quick camera access and quick call.
Performance:
The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge unit we tested was the global variant which has Exynos 8890 Octa-Core chipset coupled with 4GB of RAM. The overall performance of this chipset along with Touchwiz was really impressive. Apps opened and run in quick time and the overall experience was very good. The gaming performance of the device was excellent with great graphic performance along with the beautiful Quad HD display. The heating on this device was just nominal while playing games.
Even when restoring apps from the background, it was quick and there was no lag. Multitasking was really good on this device. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is by far one of the best performing handsets till date.
The call quality was very good on the phone and we never experienced any drop issues. The speaker unit was quite good. The device also comes up with good sharing and connectivity options including wireless printing, Android Beam and Wi-Fi Direct. There is also Bluetooth, 4G LTE, and micro USB support.
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge comes with 32GB internal storage which is expandable via micro SD card.
Camera:
The Samsung Galaxy S7/ Edge comes with a similar interface from last year and the typical Samsung interface. It comes with a pretty good UI which is neatly arranged. There are quick toggles for effects, HDR, timer, flash, picture size and settings on the left side. While on the right side you have the shooting options, toggle to switch to front camera and the modes.
The settings menu allows you to change the aspect ratio, video resolution and more. Clicking the mode button shows you a plethora of modes available which includes Auto, Pro, Selective focus, Panorama, Video Collage, slow motion, Food, Hyperlapse among others. You can also download additional modes from the Samsung store. The Pro mode allows you to control the ISO, exposure etc.
In the bright daylight, the Samsung Galaxy S7 takes excellent shots. The images are sharp, punchy and offer tons of detailing even when you zoom in. But with bright sunlight, at times, the exposure of the photos were slightly out of place. The interface is pretty quick in capturing photos and PDAF works well. When we turned on the HDR, again the samples came out well. There is plenty of details in the close up photos and the bokeh effects make it even better. Here again, the colors are punchy and sharpness levels are really good. The lens and sensor bring in plenty of light for low light images and they have come quite good with software processing. The OIS works very well. Now if you look at the extremely low light shots, you could see some softening in the photos to reduce the noise levels.
Here are some of the samples taken with the phone.
Samsung Galaxy S7 / Edge offers plenty of video shooting modes, 4k UHD, standard Full HD, slow motion at 720P, hyper lapse etc. The video samples were quite good and were smooth with OIS. Overall, the video quality is pretty good. The phone comes with a 5MP front camera for selfies and video calls. The front camera can also shoot QHD and Full HD video samples. The front camera photo quality was just average and the photos were blurry at times.
Overall, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge has one of the best cameras we have seen on a smartphone. You can also check out our detailed camera review.
Battery Life:
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge comes with a 3600mAh battery and the performance was quite good. The phone also supports the quick charge and wireless charging. With average usage which includes calls, camera, browsing, a bit of gaming and social networking, we could easily get more than a day of battery life on the S7 Edge. Even if you are a power user, you could get a day of battery life with the phone.
The phone also comes with additional battery saving modes to switch to in case you are running out of battery.
Verdict:
Samsung has made an effort to correct the mistakes in S6 Edge with just one form factor, bringing back the micro SD card support along with IP68 certification. The Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is one of those devices which excel in almost all areas including a great build, excellent display, superior performance and terrific camera performance.
Without a doubt, Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is one of the best smartphones money can buy today. If you are looking for a powerful flagship smartphone without any compromise, this is the device to get.
